


The Light You Hold Inside

by annabagnell, songlin



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Child Loss, Childbirth, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Infant Death, M/M, Mpreg, Pregnancy After Loss, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-05-03 10:14:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5286824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annabagnell/pseuds/annabagnell, https://archiveofourown.org/users/songlin/pseuds/songlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had your hair. She had my eyes, but that could've just been because all babies have got those eyes. She was strong, they said—a fighter, like you, like me—her heart kept doggedly beating on for so long, so much longer than anyone expected. She was so small, no longer than the distance from my hand to my elbow. She was perfect, from every tiny fingernail to the careful curve of her lip was perfect, and she had a little brown fingerprint of a birthmark on her left shoulder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Light You Hold Inside

**Author's Note:**

> Two purveyors of filth collaborate and out comes...this bottomlessly sad thing. Content warning for some internal consent uncertainty. No actual nonconsensual sex, though.
> 
> Title and epilogue heavily influenced by the song "Light," by Sleeping at Last.

John stares out the window.

He stares up at the machines around the hospital bed, quietly beeping away.

He stares over at Sherlock’s face, lying pale and motionless, blue veins stark under the cold fluorescent lights.

He stares everywhere, anywhere, except for where the sheets lay flat over Sherlock’s deflated stomach, and the empty corner of the room where a bassinet should be.

The room is quiet now that John’s phone is off. He’d let a few people know—Greg, Mrs. Hudson, Mycroft—trusted them to pass the news along to anyone else who needed to know, and powered it down. He wants the silence.

They moved them off the obstetrics ward and over to the post-surgery ward. It’s more appropriate, after all. When John shuts his eyes, he can still see Sherlock, pale and still, his face half-hidden with the anesthesia mask and surrounded by a swarm of doctors and nurses. He can see Sherlock afterwards, too, as they wheeled him over to recovery, his upper body bared and his stomach marred by a red gash just below his waist and so, so empty.

John pushes the heels of his hands into his closed eyes and tries to breathe.

The silence is broken by a soft moan of pain. It isn't loud—John wouldn’t expect it to be—but it’s enough to give him the moment’s advance warning to steel himself.

Sherlock's mouth spreads into a grimace of pain. He blinks once, twice, then opens his eyes. They don't focus on anything in particular, just gaze glassily at the ceiling. He goes to lift one arm, but finds it heavily weighed down by IV lines. He winces, lays it back down, and tries the other.  
Sickening emotion spreads cold and painful through John's insides as he watches Sherlock lift his hand, rest it on the loose, empty skin over his stomach, and let his eyes drift shut again.

"They tried," John says. His voice is hoarse from grief and disuse. "They tried, but she'd just lost too much oxygen."

She had suffocated inside her father without ever drawing a single breath. This part, John does not say. Sherlock can spin the story himself.

Sherlock nods. He tries to take in a deep breath, flinches, and blows it out. _Oh—the stitches,_ John thinks, and feels suddenly, achingly sad.

"They let me hold her," he says. "Before they...before she...before. When you were still out."

"How long?" His voice is barely louder than a whisper. John remembers why: the long, awful scream of pain just before Sherlock fell terribly, awfully silent, and the room filled immediately with people.

"Twelve hours, give or take," says John. "I asked them to—if you want to, you can...see her. She’s just downstairs."

Sherlock does not answer for a long while.

He just lies very still, breathing shallowly and eyes shut, letting out not so much as a twitch to betray the pain he must be in. He could have fallen asleep again.

But then he turns his head towards John, opens his eyes, and fixes him with a blank, empty look. "Why?"

The word pierces John like a knife. John jerks, pulling back a hand he hadn't noticed he'd covered Sherlock's with.

He should have an answer.

Nothing comes.

So instead of replying, John just shakes his head. "Thought you might want to."

He does not say everything that comes to mind. _She had your hair. She had my eyes, but that could've just been because all babies have got those eyes. She was strong, they said—a fighter, like you, like me—her heart kept doggedly beating on for so long, so much longer than anyone expected. She was so small, no longer than the distance from my hand to my elbow. She was perfect, from every tiny fingernail to the careful curve of her lip, and she had a little brown fingerprint of a birthmark on her left shoulder._

Sherlock turns his head away and shuts his eyes again. "You thought wrong."

John runs back to the flat to fetch Sherlock something to wear home. The clothes he’d worn there were ruined beyond repair.

(He is relieved to find that Mrs. Hudson has cleaned the bathroom. Even so, it’ll be a long time before he’ll be able to open that door without remembering Sherlock’s panicked cry and rushing in to find Sherlock sagging against the sink, holding his round, full stomach in both hands and looking at John with his eyes wide in naked terror as blood spread down his legs, darkening his pajamas to a deep crimson.)

Sherlock accepts his second-best pajamas without a word and pulls them on carefully. John catches a glimpse of the angry, stapled wound before Sherlock’s shirt falls over it.

The hospital sends home a “memory box.” Pictures, handprints and footprints, a lock of hair, a blanket. Sherlock glances at it once, then spends the rest of the taxi ride home looking resolutely out the window at nothing at all.

When they get home, John takes it upstairs to what used to be his bedroom. They had spent months painting and shopping and bickering about everything from the wallpaper to the lampshade.

Two weeks ago, John had set up the rocking chair and called Sherlock up to take a look. Sherlock had been cross at the prospect of mounting the stairs, gravid as he was. But when he finally came up, opened the door, and saw the room, his dark mood melted away into an expression of blissful amazement. It brought a grin to John’s face that spread and spread until he was beaming, laughing, cupping his hands over the swell of Sherlock’s stomach and kissing him until they were both laughing.

“It’s done,” Sherlock said. John couldn’t remember ever seeing that look on his husband’s face before in his entire life, and it made him practically giddy with joy. “We did it.”

“Oh my God, we’re having a baby,” John said. “Jesus, we’re having a fucking baby.”

He can’t remember how long they stood there, laughing and kissing and feeling the swimmy movements in Sherlock’s stomach as their daughter stirred in sympathetic joy.

Now, John sits in the rocking chair, where he should be holding his baby as she falls asleep, and goes through the memory box one piece at a time. He touches his fingertips to the stamped image of her tiny toes and remembers how soft her skin was. He doesn’t dare open the little bag holding the lock of hair, because it’s still in the shape of one perfectly formed curl and he doesn’t want to break it apart. He looks at the photographs they took of her face and marvels at how she looks as if she were just sleeping. She felt like it, too, still warm from Sherlock’s body, although that warmth ebbed away so fast. John remembers trying to hold her closer, to give her what little life and heat he could for what little time they had.

John looks around the room, and everything sweeps through him—every unopened package of nappies and every still-folded pair of tiny pyjamas and the excruciatingly empty cradle and the hollow place in the crook of his elbow where his daughter’s head should be—and he crumples.

The box slips from John’s grasp and falls softly onto the carpet as he doubles over, buries his face in his hands, and lets the tears come. His shoulders shake with sobs. They scrape his throat raw, catching until he chokes and nearly retches, but he can’t stop. He can’t breathe, and he still can’t stop. His vision goes dark and his head spins until he has to sink from the chair to the floor, onto his knees and then all fours and then just rolling over on his side and sobbing until he feels like he’ll never breathe again.

Gradually, eventually, it tapers out, leaving John exhausted and drained. His limbs are almost too numb and heavy to lift. He turns his head and rubs his face over his arm, wiping away tears and spit and slime.

He’s got to get up.

John gathers up everything in the memory box and places it on the little table next to the cradle. Then, he gathers himself and goes downstairs.

Sherlock is on the couch. He’s still in his pyjamas, and he’s lying on his side with his head on his arm. His other arm is at his side, hand resting softly on his stomach.

John wants desperately to gather him up and hold him. He needs to hold something he loves, or he’s going to shake apart into a thousand disparate pieces of almost-father.

Instead, he makes dinner.

Sherlock doesn’t move.

When John makes him, he eats. He showers for a very long time, so long that John gets concerned and is about to consider breaking the door in before he emerges.

That first night, John finishes dinner, gets ready for bed, and goes to fetch Sherlock.

"I'm going to sleep," he says, laying a spread hand on Sherlock's shoulder.

Sherlock does not reply, not even to shrug.

John withdraws and goes off to bed. He holds out hope for some time that Sherlock is just lagging, that he would be along eventually. He falls asleep still waiting.

“We’ve got to work on...arrangements,” John says the next day, while Sherlock is drinking the tea and eating the toast John has forced on him.

Sherlock slants him a blank look. “Arrangements?”

John swallows a mouthful of toast. It sticks unpleasantly in his throat. “Funeral arrangements.”

Sherlock doesn’t look at him when he says, “Why?”

John’s throat clenches. “It’s...the done thing.” He’s aware of how stupid he sounds. He feels about that stupid at the moment.

Sherlock picks up a spoon and meditatively stirs his tea. “Whatever you like.”

John blinks at Sherlock and firmly, resolutely, does not think about the baby laying in the dark and the cold in the hospital morgue being here, with them, resting in Sherlock’s arms, snuffling quietly in her sleep. “I’ll just...handle it.”

Two days after they come home, Sherlock's milk comes in.

He doesn't say anything, but he stays in the shower for ages, and comes out with his chest flattened and reformed by tightly-wrapped bandages underneath his shirt. When he lays himself out on the sofa, he is on his back, not his side, and he crosses his arms across his chest.

John does some searching on the Internet, glad at least that Sherlock doesn’t glare at him for the slow tap-tap of his fingers on the keys. He wants to help, even if Sherlock doesn’t want him to. He takes his laptop into the kitchen and works in there for the quarter-hour or so it takes to succeed in his endeavor.

He brings a hot compress—a pillowcase folded in quarters and filled with rice and a little bit of chamomile leaf tea, and microwaved until it was warm—to Sherlock and set it down on the couch. Sherlock looks up at him dully, eyes glazed over, and doesn’t say a word, doesn’t move, as John lifts his shirt. He can tell right away that the binding is too tight. But he doesn’t want to press too far, so he just takes the compress and lays it over Sherlock’s chest. Sherlock hisses, but doesn’t protest, and lets John lower his shirt to hold it in place.

“Let me know if it gets too bad, yeah?” he says softly, feeling like his words are disturbing some sort of thick dust that has settled over the room.

Sherlock doesn’t reply.

The hospital calls John to ask him when the funeral will be, where they need to send her body. John glances over at Sherlock and leaves the room, shutting himself in the bedroom, away from Sherlock. “We haven’t planned it yet,” he says quietly, staring at the door, listening for Sherlock. “Just keep her there. I’ll let you know when we’re ready.”

“We can only hold her here for so long,” the woman on the other end of the line says, and John nods wordlessly. “Regulations. I’m sorry.” John nods again and, without another word, ends the call. Sherlock doesn’t want a funeral for the baby. John’s not sure he can move on without one.

People start to call and text John, asking about the funeral. _Sherlock doesn’t want one,_ John can’t say. _He says it’s stupid to mourn a child nobody ever knew. He won’t talk about her. He barely responded when I brought it up. The hospital’s threatening to cremate her if we don’t have one soon._

“We’re working on plans,” he says instead. “I’ll let you know when we work something out.”

He holds a pair of tiny socks in his hands and wonders how different things could have been.

One night, after Sherlock has gone to bed, John is watching something—he’s not sure what anymore—on the telly when he hears a quiet knock on the door. He stiffens, knowing it’s Mrs. Hudson. She’d left them alone for a few days, but it was time to talk, John supposed. A tear grows fat on his lower eyelid as he remembers—Mrs. Hudson was going to be the baby’s godmother, her honorary grandmother.

Mrs. Hudson is already teary-eyed when John opens the door, and she wraps him in a timid hug which he returns with a quiet grunt. “I’m sorry I haven’t come down to talk,” he whispers, his voice hoarse. His shoulders are shaking.

“Oh, John,” she replies thickly. “It’s okay, dearie. I knew you’d talk when you were ready. How is Sherlock holding up?”

 _He hasn’t talked about her at all,_ John doesn’t say. _Hardly talks to me, even. His milk came in today and he didn’t even tell me. He never held her, did you know? He never even saw her. Not once._

“He’s...not talking a whole lot,” John does say. “I think he’s grieving in his...in his own way. He’s already gone to bed. Not feeling well, I don’t think.”

Mrs. Hudson clucks sympathetically, wipes her eyes, and pushes past John. “My, but the flat is a bit of a mess, John. I know how it can be, preparing for—well.” She stops and swallows, and John sees briefly how frail she looks, like one wrong word could send her crumbling to the floor. He’s glad he lied. He wishes he didn’t have to. “If you need help tidying, packing things away—I would be happy to help. And meals, too. Goodness knows how busy you must be with the memorial service.” She turns to look at him, question in her eyes.

John clears his throat and nods. “Yeah. Um, Friday, I think. The hospital’s...they’re not going to keep her there much longer.” He looks around blankly. “I’ll let you know where and when.”

The day before the funeral, Mycroft visits for the first time. Mrs. Hudson lets him up, which is for the best. John's not entirely sure he would have. When he gives it a moment's thought, though, he's relieved to have him there. If anyone can rouse Sherlock from the state he's in, his brother can.

Even Mycroft is showing the strain, though. The lines around his eyes seem more pronounced, and there's a hint of redness and swelling there that betrays his lack of sleep.

"John," he says. He doesn't embrace him, but he does lay his hand on his shoulder. "I cannot imagine what this has been like for you. You have my profoundest sympathies."

The rigid facade of aristocratic professionalism that Mycroft wears at all times is still in place, but there's a softness showing through that leads John to believe that for once, Mycroft Holmes is entirely sincere.

John smiles tightly and nods. "Yeah. Thanks."

Mycroft lets his hand drop and looks to his brother on the sofa. His mouth twists into something strictly controlled, but only just. "How has he been?" he says, talking to John but looking at Sherlock.

There’s no point in lying, not to him. John shrugs helplessly. "Like...this. All the time. He eats whatever I give him, and he showers. Besides that?" He gestures to the couch. "Right there."

He does not say that Sherlock has been sleeping there as well. He is sure he doesn't need to.

Mycroft takes his phone from his pocket, holds down a button, and replaces it. “Could I have a moment to...speak with him?”

John looks at his husband, supine and near catatonic. Normally, he'd tell Mycroft where he could put his moment. Normally, he’s the last person Sherlock needs. But what with...everything, and how Sherlock's been...the way he's been, John’s willing to give nearly anything a try.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

John picks up his laptop and sits it on the kitchen table. Meanwhile, Mycroft goes to the sofa and kneels down next to his brother.

“Sherlock,” Mycroft murmurs.

Sherlock turns over, from his back to his side, so his back is to Mycroft. Feeling intrusive, John turns to his laptop screen. He has editing he could be doing. Emails to be replying to. Hell, files to rename and move around. Anything to take himself out of the room.

Before Sherlock’s state forced them into temporary leave, John had written up a number of cases he had never posted before. He had a decent dozen or so, and figured he could put one up every couple of weeks, for the folks who weren’t interested in the baby pictures they were liable to be flooded with. Now, at the very least, they’d have something to read while they speculated about what had happened, and where Sherlock Holmes had gone.

John hasn’t said much about it on the blog. He’d made one short post about how he’d be taking a “leave of absence” for “personal reasons,” and turned off comment notifications. Sooner or later, he’s going to have to say more, isn’t he? He wrote about it when he thought Sherlock was dead. Isn’t this the same?

A few fragments of sentences drift in from the one-sided conversation Mycroft is holding in the next room.

“...have to. You’ve John to think of, if nothing else.”

John’s typing slows. Mycroft will know he’s listening, but he can’t be bothered to care.

“You mustn’t let it consume you.”

Sherlock doesn’t respond.

Over the top of the screen, John watches Mycroft lean in towards Sherlock, as if listening for something, then hesitate, pull away, and get to his feet. He tugs his jacket into place and sighs deeply.

“Take care of him, John,” he says, as he takes his phone from his pocket and switches it back on.

With a stiff smile, John nods.

He waits until Mycroft is down the stairs and out the door before he gets up and goes to Sherlock, taking Mycroft’s place at his side and settling one hand on Sherlock’s shoulder.

“Hey,” John says. “What did he say?”

At first, he thinks Sherlock is going to continue the silent treatment. But then: “Nothing worthwhile,” he says.

John nearly laughs at that. A little smile breaks through, an almost genuine one. “Same old, same old.” He rubs his thumb back and forth over the silky fabric of Sherlock’s dressing gown. “How are you?”

Sherlock rolls onto his back again. He’s looking at the ceiling, not at John, but it’s a start. John’s eyes fall down to the heavily bound swells over his chest, and his own chest throbs in sympathy.

“Hurts,” Sherlock says, short and clipped.

John nods. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “Me too.”

Sherlock shuts his eyes. His Adam’s apple bobs as he visibly swallows, and his face is tight and controlled. For a moment, John thinks that this is going to be it. His stomach lurches at the impending upheaval.

But instead, Sherlock rolls back over onto his side again. He doesn’t say anything, but John knows that his invitation into Sherlock’s space has been withdrawn. Stinging, he gets up and goes.

It does not rain the day of the funeral.

John has always thought it unfair when it rains at funerals, as if the family needs something else to go wrong. But he can’t deny that there’s a certain obscene quality to lowering someone into the ground on a bright, sunny day. At the very least, he figures they merit clouds. Instead, the sun is bright and the weather unseasonably pleasant.

John was afraid Sherlock wouldn’t want to come. He didn’t go the day John went to talk to the people at the funeral home, and he never, ever went back to the hospital to see the little body that he had grown. John woke, though, to the sound of the shower running. Sherlock came out of the bathroom dressed, for the first time since they’d gotten home, in one of his pre-pregnancy suits. Just one week and you’d almost never know. John looks at Sherlock’s chest and hurts thinking how terribly constricted he must be.

Sherlock lets John hold his hand during the short service, but it’s limp in John’s grip. He fixes his steadfast gaze on the floor some three feet past the heartbreakingly tiny coffin and doesn’t move.

Sherlock disappears to use the bathroom after the service, abandoning John to their friends. John fields interminable embraces, expressions of sympathy, offers of home-cooked food, and other people’s tears. His own eyes are dry, though his throat feels tight.

He lets Greg Lestrade pull him aside, away from the bulk of well-wishers, and wrap him up in a strong hug. When they break apart, Greg’s eyes are wet.

“Sorry,” he says, swiping away the moisture with the back of his hand. “Know you don’t want to be dealin’ with me all teared up today.”

John relaxes a little. “Thanks.”

“Victoria and I lost one at thirty-six weeks,” Greg says quietly. “Hardest damn thing in the world.”

John nods. There’s nothing to say to that, really.

“You need anything—and I mean anything—you call. Hell, even if you don't call, I'll be by with food and beer, if you'll have it.”

“Yeah,” John manages. “I...thanks.”

Greg glances back towards the main room and his brow creases a little with worry. "Where's Sherlock?"

John looks down and swallows. "Dunno."

"How's he been?"

John shrugs. He's fielded the question already and given more or less the same rote answer every time: "He's managing as best he can." But saying the same to Greg after his unexpected honesty feels wrong.

"I don't know," he says, and before he can stop it, he's saying everything. "He doesn't talk. _Him_ , not talking! Not to me, not to Mycroft, not to anybody. He didn't care about the funeral. He only eats when I make him, and I'm pretty sure he only showers because it hurts less when he does. And I—shit, I need—someone who will. He's the only one who went through it all with me, and now he's all—gone. Jesus, Greg, it's like I lost them both."

John presses the heels of his hands hard into his eyes in a futile attempt to suppress the hot tears streaming down his cheeks. His knees have gone weak and his head is going threateningly dizzy. Greg takes him by the shoulders and steers him into a chair, where John slumps forward, props his elbows up on his knees, and buries his face in his hands.

"Shit, Greg, I'm sorry," he says.

"Save it. I'd be a fucking mess in your shoes."

John laughs humorlessly. "What the hell am I, then?"

"You're the bravest fucking man I know," Greg replies, "and you hurt like hell."

John doesn't lift his head, but he nods. "Yeah," he says quietly. "I do."

Greg rubs his shoulder. "Want me to make your excuses so you and Sherlock can get the hell out?"

The hollow pain in John's chest melts into something more fond. Greg Lestrade, he's realizing, is really a first-class friend. Probably the best friend he's got.

"Absolutely," he says.

Greg grins. "Go clean up your face and get your husband."

John goes into the men's room and splashes cold water onto his face. It doesn't make him look much less haggard, but he doesn't think anything could.

He looks around for Sherlock and finds that but besides him, the bathroom is unoccupied. So, it transpires, is the other men's bathroom. A quick look over the main room finds it similarly lacking in Sherlocks. John takes out his phone, taps out a quick text: _“Did u go home?”_ and fetches his coat.

In the cab, he rests his head against the cool glass of the window and lets the silence envelop him.

John calls Sherlock’s name when he arrives back at the flat, but (unsurprisingly) there is no response. Sherlock’s here, though—his shoes are at the door, coat on the hook, phone on the kitchen table. “Sherlock?” John calls again, and this time hears movement behind the closed door of the bathroom. John wishes, briefly, that he sees Sherlock even half so often as that damned shower does.

He checks the doorknob. Unlocked. Knocking twice, he waits a moment before opening the door and entering. Sherlock is seated in the shower, with the water off, his clothes in a puddle on the floor. A milk-soaked Ace bandage is on the top of the pile, and John grimaces in sympathy.

He lowers himself to aching knees, then flops backward gracelessly and leans against the tub walls. Sherlock is hand-expressing one breast, which is reddened and looks terribly painful.

“I’m sorry,” John breathes, and stops himself from reaching out to take Sherlock’s free hand. “Is this why you left?”

Sherlock looks up at John and blinks. His eyes are red, but John doesn’t dare think he was crying. He isn’t sure Sherlock has the emotional capacity to cry.

At length, he says, “It was over. I left.”

John shuts his eyes. He bites his lip. He nods. Anger pulses hot in his chest.

“You left,” he repeats. “Left me to talk to everyone. On my own.”

Sherlock makes a motion like a shrug, but without raising his shoulders all the way. “What do they care?”

John shakes his head and looks at a point somewhere above Sherlock’s head. All of a sudden, he can’t even think about looking at this man. Fury thunders in his chest, like lightning in his veins, and words pour out before he can think about them. “You may pretend not to give a fuck, Sherlock, but I can’t. And I cannot—I _cannot believe_ that you would make me do that on my own. We’re supposed to be partners. _We_ lost her. And you just—you don’t even—fuck!” John’s heart is thumping in his ears. He clenches his fists before he does anything stupid with them. “Do you even care? You were her _father_ and you didn’t—you didn’t even cry at her _fucking funeral._ How dare you.”

Sherlock just stares back.

John chokes back a sob, resists the urge to slap Sherlock, to grab his shoulders and shake him until he’s got sense again, rises clumsily to his feet and leaves the bathroom, unable to hold back the hot tears that run down his cheeks.

That night, Sherlock comes into their bedroom.

The creak of the door wakes John immediately. It’s hardly the first time that Sherlock has crept into their room hours after John has gone to bed. After the first few times, John had stopped reacting, in the interest of more quickly getting back to sleep. This time, though, his stillness has a different quality, as if he’s afraid he’ll spook Sherlock into flight.

The sheets lift, and cool air rushes in. John waits for Sherlock’s weight to sink into the mattress next to him and for the covers to settle over them again.

Instead, a rough hand pushes him from his side onto his back. John blinks his eyes open, startled, but he in the darkness he can’t make out much more than silhouettes. Sherlock climbs onto the bed, straddles John’s waist, leans down, and claims his mouth with a hard kiss.

John can’t do much more than grunt in surprise. He takes hold of Sherlock’s hips and finds he’s naked from the waist down. Sherlock pulls back to strip off his shirt.

“Sherlock, what—”

“Stop talking,” Sherlock says shortly.

He flings his shirt into some corner of the room and bends back down to suck a hot mark into John’s throat. John bares his neck out of habit more than desire.

He’d gone to bed without a shirt. Now, Sherlock rolls halfway off and pulls John’s pants partway down, leaving John naked from neck to knees. John shuts his eyes and tries not to think of the ugly scar above Sherlock’s pelvis as Sherlock crouches over him on all fours and plants wet kisses down his body. As Sherlock latches onto John’s nipple and flicks his tongue over the hard peak, John tries to blot out the memory of Sherlock’s swollen breasts and bruise-dark areolas.

But the more John tries not to think of it, the clearer it is in his mind. He combs his fingers through Sherlock’s hair and gently tugs, just enough to arrest his attention. “Sherlock.”

Sherlock lifts his head. “Stop talking,” he says again, with a sharper, ominous edge to his voice. “And pull my hair,” he adds, in the rough undertone that John has never once heard outside of the bedroom.

John stops talking. He should stop this altogether, but God, he’d missed this so much. Not sex—simple closeness. He hadn’t realized how desperately he needed to hold and be held, to touch and be touched. The sudden onslaught of intimacy is disorienting. In his muddled state, all John can do is hold on.

Sherlock opens his mouth and scoops John's cock into the circle of his lips. John's eyelids flutter. Sherlock has done this before, has gently suckled John's soft cock into hardness with heartrending patience. He's trying the same now. It's all too apparent from the way he's working his tongue under John's foreskin and massaging the backs of John's thighs. Usually, it gets John hard as iron inside of a minute. Tonight, though...

The reality of what they're doing hits him like a wave of nausea. He tugs at Sherlock's hair, trying to pull him up and off so they can talk. But Sherlock just sighs in—relief? John remembers him asking John to pull his hair. And, God, if all it takes to get him out of this slump is a little hair-pulling, then John's fucking overjoyed to provide.

He combs his fingers through those dark curls and really _yanks_. Sherlock moans around the soft weight of John's cock in his mouth and redoubles his efforts. For a minute, John manages to convince himself it's okay. This is alright. It's just a little hair-pulling, a little cocksucking. But it's plain from the sinewy twist of Sherlock's body that he's interested in more. And John...can't do that for him. He just can't stomach it.

Sherlock lifts his head and lets John's prick slip free. Even in the darkness, John can make out his glare.

"What?" he says testily. "What is _wrong_ with you?"

John blinks back his shock. "I—excuse me?"

Sherlock rises onto all fours, crawls up John's body, and pins him to the mattress at his shoulders. "Why won't you do this?"

"Do—"

_"Fuck me!"_

As if proving a point, Sherlock kisses him again. His teeth scrape over John's lower lip as he invades his mouth, and his hands are tight and unforgiving at John's shoulders. He presses the full length of his body against John's—and that, honestly, is the last thing John can take.

It isn't that he finds Sherlock unattractive. On the contrary, he's still the most beautiful creature John has ever known. But the story of their loss is written in flesh along every inch of Sherlock's body, and the intimate contact only brings those details into stark relief. He pushes Sherlock up a little. Sherlock growls, but John holds fast.

"I can't," he murmurs. "I...it's too soon. I don’t want to hurt you."

Sherlock turns his head to the side and kisses the inside of John's wrist, and it makes John's stomach curl. "Come on," he purrs, because he's always all coy and tempting when he's afraid he won't get what he wants. "I'm good. You know I'm _so_ good. We'll feel better."

That is the very last straw. Because that's what he was afraid of, wasn't he? That Sherlock didn't come to share in their mutual grief. That instead, he wants to force the lid down on John's, when frankly, John isn't finished with it yet. It's too much to lock away just now. Even if it wasn't, he's not sure he'd try.

He isn't done yet. He hasn't finished with her yet.

"No," John says firmly, and pulls his wrist away.

Sherlock pushes himself off and flings himself away. "Then what is the _fucking point_ of you?" he snarls. He climbs off the bed, snatches his shirt up off the floor, and pulls it on. "Why can't you just— _stop?"_

Sherlock stalks out the door and slams it shut behind him.

John returns to work a full month before he was scheduled to, and the reunion with his coworkers is somber. All of them know what happened, and not a single one welcomes John back to work with anything approaching happiness.

He sees five patients. He suspects that the receptionist is diverting most of them to other doctors, but can’t bring himself to complain. Smiling at children with strep infections and shy teenagers with concerns about their cycles is straining, but not enough to make John want to go home. The very air there feels heavy. Out here, it’s just him and what’s on his shoulders, no one else’s.

When he returns home that night, Sherlock isn’t on the sofa. John blinks. Sherlock is _always_ on the sofa. The only time he’s not on the sofa is when he’s in the shower. The pipes aren’t running, and the flat isn’t humid. Where else could he be.?

He hears a thump from upstairs, and his heart leaps into his throat. There’s only one room upstairs with anything in it. Sherlock hasn’t been up there since before the—before they came home, so what is he—

John smells the smoke before he sees it, seeping from upstairs and dissipating into a fine gray cloud permeating the flat. As soon as it registers, he is springing into action, bounding up the stairs and throwing open the door.

At first, the smoke is too thick to see. John holds his breath, squints, and waves his arm in front of his face until his eyesight clears and he gets a clear vision of the scene.

Sherlock is standing in the middle of the room, looming over a small fire over the carpet. There are scorch marks on the floor, on the white-painted dresser, on the walls.

“What—Sherlock! What are you doing? What the hell did you do?” John cries, shoving Sherlock out of the way.

He grabs a towel and beats at the flames. From behind him, Sherlock lunges forward with a snarl and seizes his arm. John pushes him back.

When he's fought down the worst of the flames, he sees the melted acrylic knitted booties and singed hats, and he realizes exactly what was burning.

When the flames have died out, John strides to the window, flings it open, and turns to survey the room.

The fire alarm above his head dangles from a single wire, the others cut jagged and loose. The floor is littered with cigarette butts, scattered alongside the pink onesies and green socks.

John turns to Sherlock, whose face has gone carefully blank again. John, though, is done. Days and weeks of pent-up emotion have seeped into his chest and festered, becoming something toxic and repulsive.

“What in _fuck_ are you playing at, Sherlock?” he says, low and fast and _furious_. “I know you want to forget it ever happened. You want to wear your old clothes and do your old job and burn her clothes and ruin the nursery, like if you do enough damage maybe it’ll all go away. _It’s not going to happen that way!"_

John is shouting now. It burns him on its way up his throat, but it keeps pouring out. The rage is something alien, larger than himself, demanding an outlet.

He throws himself forward, backs Sherlock against the wall, grabs his wrist tightly, and drags it downward. Sherlock snarls and resists, but John is stronger just now. He presses Sherlock's hand against his stomach, over where their baby grew. Sherlock turns his head away, the muscles in his jaw flexing.

“She was in here,” John says, and his voice sounds like thunder. “It doesn’t matter how much you try to forget that. We had a baby, Sherlock, and we loved her, and you’re doing me—her—doing everyone a disservice, a huge _fucking_ disservice, by trying to forget. _Fuck you."_

Sherlock's head is still turned away. That little thing, that tiny refusal, is somehow more enraging than the fire, or the sex, or the lying lifeless on the couch. John gives Sherlock one rough shake.

"Sherlock."

Sherlock doesn't move. John shakes him again, and harder.

"Sherlock!"

John counts to three. He is about to shake him again—really shake him—when Sherlock flies to life, throwing John's arms away and flinging himself at him.

Whether or not it should, the first punch catches John by surprise. It strikes him across the cheek. As he staggers backwards, he blocks the second one coming at his face, but misses the hard shove to his chest. He misses the next shove too, but on the third he catches Sherlock's arms and fights back. Sherlock wrestles him to the side, and John sees the look on his face—manic, wild, teeth bared and eyes savage. It ignites something in him, and he surges up and fights back. He bats Sherlock's hands out of the way, braces his own against Sherlock's chest, and pushes him away.

To his surprise, Sherlock gasps and doubles over, crossing his arms over his chest. For a moment, when he is still caught up in the adrenaline of the fight, John doesn't realize why Sherlock is as wounded as he is, and then—

"Oh, God," John says, horrified with himself, "I—your breasts—"

The anger in his chest evaporates as Sherlock sways to the side and throws one hand out to catch himself on a table. He knocks into something. Reflexively, he reaches out to catch it, and looks at what it was.

It's the memory box, still sitting on the bedside table, perfectly intact.

The air in the room goes very, very still. Sherlock can't look away from the box under his hand. John hovers in his liminal space, unsure whether to move towards him or turn and leave. Sherlock lurches forward, hand twitching up towards John, but he holds himself back. He sways a moment, then raises his head, meets John's eyes for one fleeting moment, and, with a terrible, shuddering gasp, he crumples.

John is there to catch him and to hold Sherlock’s shaking body as he breaks. They sink to the floor, Sherlock only barely clinging to John. The energy of a moment ago is entirely exhausted. At the floor, the smell of acrid burnt cloth is stronger, but it’s not what brings tears to John’s eyes.

“I—I, I woke up and I knew she was gone, but I couldn’t,” Sherlock sobs, his chest and shoulders shaking with emotion. “I don’t—I didn’t feel her, and I...John, I lost her and I never, never told her I—how much—”

“She knew,” John says, and his own voice is thick with tears. He rubs Sherlock’s trembling back and nods as he rocks back and forth. “She—Violet—she knew you loved her. She fought so hard to be with us.”

“I never said goodbye. I never even said her name. I never held her, not once. I didn't even see her. I thought maybe if I didn't, I could—it could be like it was.”

John just nods and strokes Sherlock’s hair. It’s all he can do.

“It hurts,” Sherlock whispers hoarsely. “I had her, she was here, she was with me, and she's gone, and it's so empty. You can't—you can't imagine how much it hurts."

John swallows around the tightness in his throat. "I know. I know, Sherlock. I know."

Sherlock is lost. Days and days of denied emotion are possessing him, racking him with sobs. Every muscle in his body is wound tight with the force of his grief. How could John have ever thought this man felt nothing? The proof of his heart is plain in every spasm of anguish. How much had it taken for him to lock all this away? And how painful must it be now that it’s finally spilling out?

He is whispering something. John can’t hear it, until suddenly he does: it’s her name, over and over, a litany of “Violet, Violet, Violet,” and he realizes they haven’t said it once, neither one of them, not since it happened. He doesn’t know if he’s even heard it out loud. He’s looked away from where it’s been written, on the box and the birth certificate and the memorial, and walked carefully around it in his memory without even realizing it. The tightness in John’s throat swells into an ache. He wipes at his face with a shaking hand and finds it comes away wet.

When Sherlock’s body has uncoiled, lying loosely in John’s arms rather than tensing inwards, and he is breathing in long, shallow breaths, John finds that there is nothing left to cry. Not forever, but for now, he is empty.

He kisses the top of Sherlock’s head. “Do you want to go to bed?”

Sherlock does not answer at first. John is just about to ask again when Sherlock swallows and says in a hoarse, weak voice, “Very much.”

Later, curled around each other in the twilight of pre-sleep, John murmurs, “I love you. Enough for Violet and me both.”

Sherlock holds him tightly, and John knows it means “me too.”

Sherlock’s milk dries out in a few weeks.

One day, he lies down on the sofa naked from the waist up. John doesn’t quit tidying the kitchen and tries not to look at him. If Sherlock wants him to notice, he’ll say something.

Sure enough, after a moment, he says, “They don’t hurt.”

John looks.

Sherlock is on the sofa, but it is not the vacant-eyed, limp sprawl of those earlier days. He is on his back, and one hand is loosely, almost self-consciously covering one breast. The other is resting on his stomach, fingers just over the line of his scar.

“They don’t look like they hurt as much,” John says. He isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say.

Sherlock is running his fingers back and forth over the scar. Already it’s only a thin pink line, intersected by the dark tan vertical line that appeared halfway through the second trimester, when Sherlock was just beginning to really show.

Suddenly, painfully, John understands.

He sets down the stack of dish towels, crosses the room, kneels by the sofa, and covers Sherlock’s hands—on his stomach and chest both—with his own.

“Hey,” he says gently, “I know.”

 

* * *

 

 

The next autumn, as the weather turns cold, Sherlock senses the changes in his body that mean his cycle is returning.

He connects the disparate facts—appetite, lethargy, mood swings—while he’s in bed with John on a Tuesday morning. The realization strikes him with a wave of nausea so acute that it makes him bolt upright with a gasp. In an instant, John is awake, if not entirely alert.

“Whazzit?” he says, still bleary.

Sherlock swallows hard. His stomach is still churning, but he is fairly sure that he is no longer in urgent danger of being sick. He lies back down. John curls up against his side and rests his hand on Sherlock’s chest.

“What’s wrong?” he asks again.

Sherlock frowns. There is an answer to be given, but he isn’t sure of what it is yet.

Even months removed, there are wounds in him that have not healed. He forgets sometimes, for increasingly longer stretches of time. But then he’ll pass a mother nursing her child in the park, or spot a young omega who clearly hasn’t told his partner the news yet, or his thumbs will brush over his nearly-faded scar as he buttons his trousers, and the pain surges hot and fierce. The barren hollow above his pelvis sometimes aches to distraction. Sherlock wants, desperately. He should be scrambling to fill that hole.

So, now that it is a tangible possibility, why does it make him nearly sick with worry?

“Hey.” John taps Sherlock’s chest. “You in there?”

Sherlock absently takes John’s wrist, brings his hand up, and brushes a kiss over the knuckles. “Yes. Thinking.”

“Got it,” John murmurs. He closes his eyes. “Let me know when you’re ready to talk, yeah?”

“Mm.”

The answer is both obvious and unspeakably banal: Sherlock is _afraid_. Even entertaining the possibility mildly disgusts him, but increasingly it is forcing itself into consideration. He knows the statistics, that his history makes him “high-risk,” that there is every possibility of suffering the same pain and loss. That knowledge is what makes his chest clench and his stomach turn.

But then, there is the hollow, desperate ache to be considered, and the burning, terrible want. Eyes closed, Sherlock wraps his arms around his own body and remembers when it was fruitful, and what it was to be “us” and “we.”

Sherlock opens his eyes and looks down at John.

It would be dangerous. But isn’t it always?

John has fallen asleep again. Sherlock lies down beside him and prods his shoulder. “John.”

John raises his eyebrows, but doesn’t open his eyes. “Mm?”

“I’ll be going into heat sometime in the next week. We won’t be using protection.”

Now John opens his eyes. “Pardon?”

“Do keep up. We’re going to engage in coitus with the intention of conceiving. Problem?”

John blinks. “Um. No. I’m...fine. Are...are you? Sure, that is.”

“Sure? Of course I’m sure.” Does he sound sure? He hopes he does. He’s reasonably confident in being sure, which will have to suffice.

John’s face, wrinkled with concern, smooths into softness and trust. How much this man trusts him! It makes Sherlock’s heartbeat thump painfully in his chest.

“Okay,” John says. “Yeah.”

The heat is like every other, and like no other they’ve ever spent together before. Sherlock has always found himself embarrassingly unable to modulate his emotions in the throes of the fever, though it has never presented too much of a problem before. But this time, it is overwhelming. The longing and the terror swell up until they are almost unbearable. Sherlock is grasping and needy, the lust tangled with something more tender and profound. He clutches at John and says “please,” and John, his John, his wonderful John, gives him what he needs.

Near the end, when Sherlock’s energy is almost entirely drained, he lies in the lull between waves as John noses along the back of his neck and words crawl from his mouth against his will.

“I’m frightened,” he whispers.

John kisses the curve of his spine. “I know.”

“Are you?”

“Scared stupid.” Another kiss. “I do love you, though, which is pretty nice.”

Fondness bubbles up and demands to be acted upon. Sherlock rolls over and kisses John, and kisses him, and kisses him.

Six weeks later, Sherlock takes a test. He isn’t sure if it’s relief or terror that knocks his knees out from under him, but John is there to help him back up and hold him and tell him Sherlock he loves him, he loves _them_ , they’re amazing.

It’s terrifying. All of it, from start to finish, utterly nightmarish. The knowledge that everything he was doing now was everything he did last time, and that this one, like the last, could end the same way. It was out of Sherlock’s control.

He wore his trousers looser this time. With Violet, he had balked at the idea of clothes suited for his condition, and had continued to wear his trousers until he could no longer pull them closed. Just in case, he started to wear his paternity trousers before he really needed them, giving the new baby—another girl, god—all the room to grow that she could possibly want.

There was the same joy at feeling her kick that he’d felt last time. As far as he could tell, John was as incandescently happy to feel her thumping inside Sherlock’s womb as he had been when Violet did the same thing, but even through the joy Sherlock could see the edges: a little ragged, a little tattered with worry.

“She’s strong,” he said, forcing a smile which became more natural when John returned it. “She’s our strong girl.”

On Violet’s anniversary, Sherlock hauls his swollen body out of bed and wakes John up. They dress—John in a jumper, Sherlock in comfortable jeans and a paternity top he’d worn with Violet—and go to the cemetery. The grass has been mowed recently, and it sticks to Sherlock’s shoes as they walk to where she rests.

He remembers what this had been like, the day it happened. How he’d stood at the side of the grave—the tiny, tiny grave—and had done his best to ignore what was going on as his soul rent itself apart over his loss. This time, he sinks to his knees at her graveside and apologizes. John kneels next to him and holds him close, and dries Sherlock’s tears when they subside.

“She’s going to have your name,” Sherlock tells Violet, and within him, their second daughter kicks joyfully.

They don’t have another baby shower, even though a fair chunk of what was given to them before disappeared into curls of smoke and piles of ash on the day that Sherlock finally broke. Instead, they have a small gathering, just close friends, and if some visitors leave gift bags and wrapped boxes on the kitchen table, nobody says anything.

On the mantle, there are photos, and at some point everyone in the room quietly notices two sonogram prints, nearly identical in gestational age. Two murky silhouettes, outlines of tiny hands and feet, both marked “female” with Sherlock’s name typed near the top. In the corner of the print on the left is a tiny lock of hair, tucked into the frame.

Despite the doctor’s assertions that Sherlock did nothing wrong last time, he takes it almost unbearably easy once he crests 34 weeks. He hardly takes cases, even over the phone, and sleeps in and takes lukewarm baths and stays in his pyjamas and eats truly appalling amounts of applesauce. Mostly, he rests, and thinks.

Sherlock remembers the feelings from the last time—the worry, the anticipation, the discomfort—but this time he can only focus on the possibility of what’s to come. He doesn’t mind if she kicks, or stretches, or punches, or keeps him up at night. He doesn’t care if she rolls around or makes it hard for him to stand or makes him unsteady when he walks. He could endure years of practice contractions and aching breasts and loose hips, just so long as she _comes_.

He does not say this to John, but John has learned. John knows.

Labor _hurts_. It’s not like the last time, the splitting-in-two, coming-off-the-bed agony that no drug could so much as make a dent in. The pain is gradual—at first, like strong muscle cramps in his stomach and back—but they grow, in length and in severity.

Sherlock stands and braces against the wall, he lies on his side and holds the arms of the bed, he even sits on the ridiculous inflatable ball and rocks. The contractions are unforgiving. John is at his back at every instant, holding him and letting Sherlock cling to him in return.

"Sorry," Sherlock croaks, when a contraction has passed and he is unclamping his hand from around John's wrist.

John snorts. "You're pushing out a baby. I can take a sore arm. You're unbelievable."

It says something about the two of them that "unbelievable," when said by John, in that voice, in this context, does more to bolster Sherlock's spirits than any intravenous drug could.

That doesn't mean he doesn't find himself himself half-sobbing under the inexorable downward pull of his body's demands, the physical task overriding his faculties and overtaking his brilliant mind. Again, he is terrified. He can hear the midwife talking with John, discussing their options, and he hears the word "caesarian."

"No," he rasps out, then louder: "John!"

John goes to him immediately. "I'm here, I'm right here."

Sherlock grabs for his hand. "Don't let them. I have to see it. I have to see her."

He will later doubt that he was making the sense he thought he was, but John understands. "You will," he murmurs, leaning in close and kissing Sherlock's brow. "You'll see everything, and I'm right here. You're doing fine. Just keep going."

Sherlock's face contorts as his body pulls him back down.

Time takes on a hazy, unrealistic quality. Between contractions, Sherlock leans back against John. They are kneeling on the floor in a nest of blankets—which may be Sherlock's doing, he isn’t sure—and it has been a long time. Long enough that Sherlock should have started pushing, shouldn't he? He is about to ask when the pressure builds and twists and tightens and then squeezes, and he's pushing. He can't do anything else. John has his hands and is bracing Sherlock's back against his front. Sherlock pushes and pushes and _pushes_ —and then the vise-grip lifts, and he can gasp in a breath.

"I pushed," he says, in a dumbstruck voice.

"Fuck yeah you did." John kisses his damp forehead. "Jesus, you're incredible, you're just so damn incredible."

Sherlock smiles. He is incredible, and John is incredible, and they have, no doubt, an unbelievably incredible child to meet, if Sherlock can _just_ —

He pushes, pushes, and breathes. Push, push, breathe. He is splitting, he will crack in two down the middle from the inconceivable pressure—push, push, _push_...and breathe. Little by little, he brings their daughter closer to the world, until with a gasp and a sudden fierce flare of pain—

"Oh my God, you're almost there," John says. "She's got your hair."

Sherlock’s hair. Violet’s hair.

Sherlock shakes his head. "Can't," he says. "I can't, it hurts, I can't."

"I know, I know," John murmurs. "Do it for me. Just a little more. You've gotta push past it. For us."

He means more than John and Sherlock, more even than the two and a half of them in the room right now.

Sherlock gathers every last scrap of pain in his being, every ounce of grief and fear, every bit of him that went into making both of his daughters, and bears down.

The pain burns, it stretches and stretches—and then snaps, and the weight in him drops downwards. Sherlock gasps.

"Holy shit, that's her head, just one more—"

Sherlock is already ahead. He squeezes John's hand and pushes one last time.

Their daughter, their second daughter, bursts howling into the world and right into her father's hands. Her papa swoons straight back into them only seconds later.

Sherlock slips into a daze. There is some noise, and someone moves him into the bed, and there is fussing about between his legs. He swats ineffectively at them. Someone is saying, "Let me see her, give her to me, let me have her." Whoever it is, Sherlock will gleefully murder him without a second thought if he touches his baby.

"She's right here, Sherlock. We’re right here."

Oh.

Sherlock opens his eyes. John is sitting on the bed next to him, cradling a bundle of blankets. Wordlessly, Sherlock holds out his arms, and John lays their baby in them with heartrending care.

Six pounds, eight ounces, twenty inches long—she's warm, which is obvious, but also a fact worth wondering at, how very warm she is—a little mole-like birthmark on the inside of her left arm, ten perfect fingernails—fingernails are _fascinating_ —a fine nest of dark curls, a soft nose that is _so_ small, _she_ is so small, _how_ is a human being meant to be so _small?_

She is dazzling. She is perfect. Sherlock wants to be so much better than he is, _more_ than he is, for this tiny being. Exaggerated promises flit through his head like pages in a book: softening the edges of everything that might hurt her, holding the world to the highest standard so that it might be worthy of her, pulling down the stars so that she could look at them more closely as she fell asleep, dedicating every remaining heartbeat in his sorry excuse for a body to defending her. Sherlock is overcome. Sherlock _loves_.

"What I would do for you," Sherlock whispers, struck with reverence. "Everything, anything, for you."

John is beside them, stroking a finger over one perfectly rounded cheek.

"Hope," he says. "We're naming her Hope Violet."

Sherlock looks at their daughter. She stirs, testing out the little limbs that John and Sherlock made for her, and sighs.

"Yes," Sherlock says softly. "Hope."

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover for The Light You Hold Inside by annabagnell and songlin](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6704293) by [gurkenpflaster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gurkenpflaster/pseuds/gurkenpflaster)




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